Keeping Faith
by RockOnAdam
Summary: Faith Steel is a young woman whose sense of independent belief and compassion has been stripped away by her bigoted father. Find out what happens when she's faced with reality and has to discover the true meaning of the word 'Christian'. Lambski, Adam Lambert, Sauli Koskinen, Adoption Contains homophobic references and scenes of a delicate, sexual, gory and violent nature.
1. NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

Note from the author **(Please read this whole note as it is very important**

**In this story, the parts written in _BOLD ITALICS_**** are flashbacks. These flashbacks are mostly written in the present tense in order to demonstrate how bigoted this young woman once was, but some of these flashbacks demonstrate the pain Faith has felt in the past – therefore the present tense makes her feelings more evident and accessible to the reader. I AM USING TENSE AS A METHOD AND NOT SIMPLY CARELESSLY DRIFTING BETWEEN TENSES! **

"**Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the knowledge that something else is more important than fear."**

When I set out to write 'Keeping Faith', I had no idea that it would go from a light-hearted 'Lambski' drama to something a little more close to my heart and, let's just say, metaphorically autobiographical. As I wrote, I was able to find a kindred spirit in Faith, a young woman in search of true happiness. She has gradually become a fictional mouthpiece, voicing and experiencing all the mental, physical and spiritual pain that I have experienced emotionally and spiritually through the years after being faced with bullies and my own inner demons and the suffering they bring.

Faith, incidentally, also lives out many of my dreams in this fanfiction, in that she becomes a classical musician (which has been my dream since I began playing the bassoon at the age of nine), falls in love with her soul mate, gets to perform in front of Adam Lambert and gets to tell him all he has done for her in her life. If any of you know me from the fandom that is the glamberts or even if you are one of those who have the misfortune of knowing me in real life, you'll know Adam is my absolute hero and inspiration. He has taught me to love myself and has helped me believe in myself and my dreams. I would love to be able to meet him personally and tell him all the wonderful things he helped me discover about myself and the feelings of joy, hope, positivity, peace and love he has brought to me – feelings I once feared I'd never feel. He opened my mind and my heart and I thank God for him every night in my prayers. He deserves all the success in the world and **also the right to marry his true love if one day he finds the desire to do so, without the interference of opposition or the fear of judgement by those around him. Love is ****not**** a gender…and it is ****never**** a sin.**

_This piece of writing is dedicated to:-_

_**Kiri:- My squiggle. You heard this one first: well…the details of it anyway. You kept the excitement of this idea alive within me even through the stress of exams. Thank you for your support and friendship. Thank you for believing in me. I want you to know that you're an amazing writer and that you should never doubt that about yourself – if you have a passion for the hobby, then you have the potential for beautiful results. You deserve to go far in life, my friend. You're an amazing human being. Don't go changing and if you have a dream, FOLLOW IT.**_

_**Adam:- You have given me SO much joy over the past three years. When God blessed me with you, I knew I had an angel in my life. Suddenly, my once self-hating mind was filled with thoughts and feelings of love and light and peace. Thank you for showing me what true confidence and self-worth are. Eternal gratitude to you for all you've done in my life…you changed my world. Only one piece of my puzzle is needed in the area of confidence and that is finding faith in my own musicianship. However, I know this will come with practice. The sky is truly the limit. And thanks for the advice – the secret to failure really is trying to please everyone.**_

_**Sauli:- Sunshine! If it weren't for your relationship and sweet, kind love with Adam, I would not have been inspired to write such a revolutionary piece of literature. You two give me hope that I will find my 'Parker' one day, too.**_

_**Anyone who feels trapped, afraid, alone or discriminated against:- In the world, there will always be Reverent Steels and Neil's everywhere. Some will try to tell you God hates you and that you'll rot in hell. Some might try to take away your rights. But know this, there are safe places and safe people out there, all over the world, who know just what it is that you feel. Even the darkest moments can produce happiness, if one only remembers to seek light (and love and peace).**_

_**To my friends:- You have made my life worth living these past three years. I have never had so many people I love in my life before…and I feel like my heart is full every time I look around my bedroom walls or go on facebook and see comments and photos of the happiness and memories we share. You are the lights that helped dispel my darkness.**_

_**Glamily:- thank you for all the support you give me. I love getting packages in the post from people I've never met halfway across the world yet feel like I've known my whole life. In particular, big shout out to Claire, Mandy, Marian, Jane, Becky, Aimee, Saundra, Courtney, Jennifer, Nida etc. Marian, I wear my peace pendant every day and it really does help with my self-belief. Nerves are something I still struggle with as a musician but Adam's message of 'Believe in you' on that necklace is something I carry with me every day around my neck.**_

_**My loyal readers:- You're in for a treat with this one. I promise. **__** Thank you for remaining supportive and loving my work.**_

_**Neil V:- Thanks for Bible bashing me. I hope you're reading this. I JUST WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT I WILL NEVER, EVER LET WHAT YOU SAID TO ME DAMAGE MY BELIEF THAT GOD IS LOVE AND THAT EQUALITY IS WHAT WE NEED. And if I ever hear that you've claimed that a gay person 'has no soul' again, I will personally hunt you down, tie you to a chair and scream every true meaning of the Bible passages you used against my beliefs FOLLOWED by all the Bible passages on love and THEN blast you with every Adam Lambert song that promotes love and peace. Know that Jesus will always love you, but I will never be able to think of you as anything more than a dirty, rabid cockroach who smells of shit and coffee.**_

_**ANYONE WHO BELIEVES GAY IS A SIN:- Get your head out of the bigotry of the church and listen to GOD, not the pastors or the elders or anyone who tells you the Bible passages on 'homosexuality' condemn all gay relationships. LOVE IS NEVER A SIN.**_

_**Anyone who once made me feel worthless:- Thank you – you added fuel to my fire in my quest for happiness and self-love. To everyone who ever betrayed me – you taught me how it feels to be lost in the world and made me realise how amazing it feels when you find your true family.**_

'It takes real courage to grow up and become who you really are.' – E.E Cummings.


	2. Accepted

'_**My name is Faith Steel. Faith by name and by nature. Everyone knows I'm a stalwart Christian. God is all I want and all I need in my life. The Bible is the word of Almighty Jehovah and it is very clear on many things, homosexuality being that which is one of the most clearly detested sins by God the father. I believe homosexuality is, as the Bible puts it, an abomination for which God created AIDS to punish and that homosexuals are the antichrists Revelations talks about, and their perverse lusts sending them to hell to rot for all eternity. Their fight for equal rights disgusts me. THEY ALREADY HAVE EQUAL RIGHTS! They can marry, can't they? Between a man and a woman, obviously. But yet they continue to insist upon petitioning for special treatment and laws, just for them. I'm not judging, I just think that homosexuals are very sad, deprived individuals who are trapped in satanic bondage which only intensive prayer can cure. By not praying for deliverance and actively choosing to be gay, they chose a wholly sinful lifestyle – a lifestyle which God destroyed the city of Sodom for…'**_

-Some years later-

'Hello, I'm Faith Lovejoy _was Steel_. Still Faith by name and nature, except…well…it's quite a long story actually. Have you got three hours? Well then, I'll tell you about how a famous singer, a Finnish reality television star, my brother and…well…a harpist, changed my life and taught me some lessons I desperately needed to learn.

'I'll start from the beginning, because it's a very good place to start. Well, not exactly the beginning of my life, because that was twenty six years and seven months ago and that would take MUCH more than three hours to tell you about. So I'll start from my 18th birthday. May 15th. I got a brand new Bible, several devotionals; which at the time I thought were the most brilliantly written pieces of literature but which I now think are holier-than-thou and completely out of line; and a beautiful cross pendant from my father; which I now detest as I believe it stands for everything I once said and did against the amazing people who saved me from myself. While at the time I didn't dare admit it or even think it, my best present came in the mailbox the very next day. My acceptance letter from Julliard School of Music.

'I guess you could say I'm a bit of a prodigy. I had only picked up the violin for the first time four years prior to my audition at Julliard. Small town, Iowan girls are usually very rarely discovered to have any kind of talents outside of reading prayers aloud in church and reciting Bible verses by heart, but when my elder sister was given a violin in our father's church's 'Music for Christ' programme, that's when I discovered my love for the instrument. I have no idea what drew me to it – it certainly wasn't my sister's screechy, out-of-tune playing 'ability'. I think she knew from early on that her talents did not lie in music, but as our mother always used to say, 'God loves a trier'. Carrie-Ann stuck with that violin for three months solid. Three whole months of me watching her and suggesting how I thought she could get a better sound out of it before finally, she lost her temper, thrust the violin in the corner and huffed off, mumbling how I should try if I was so clever. I eyed the beautiful, polished, rosewood instrument, lying there, so lonely. So ready for proper use.

'Having been watching my sister practice and reading her music books, I cautiously picked up the violin, tucked it under my chin and ran the bow over the string…and to my surprise, I produced a much sweeter sound than Carrie-Ann had ever been able to. I arranged my fingers excitedly on the finger board to form a note and, closing my eyes and expecting the worst, I bowed the violin. It didn't work the first time, but after repositioning my fingers several times, I produced a shaky but in tune D.

'After that incident, my sister never touched or talked about the violin again. It was Faith's violin now. And I practiced that violin, sometimes until my fingers were blistered, every day for at least three hours. After a year, my parents decided to employ a private tutor to teach me. Mr. Jackson was a retired music teacher who attended our church, however, after three lessons, he took my father to the side and told him that I was well beyond grade 5 standard already and, while he was helping me mend a few flaws in my technique, that there was very little else he could teach me and that I needed to get myself a professional tutor.

'So I did. Once a month, Melody Pritchett, leader of the Boston Symphony orchestra, flew in at my father's expense to give me a four hour lesson. She was an amazing musician and teacher. Brilliant and beautiful, she was the one who taught me about tone and style. About correct technique. She taught me how to practice difficult passages, how to pluck and bow properly. Not to read the music so much as_ feel_ it. And I understood exactly what she was saying. I grew as a player with her advice. Leaps and bounds, as they say. I loved Melody so much. But father didn't. Not one bit. He was constantly grounding me because he believed me to be idolising her.

'And then one day she was fired, and for a while it seemed to me he had no good reason for doing so at all. However, soon after, I received a letter from her, explaining why it had happened. That my father had caught her calling her _**girlfriend**_ outside our house. I never replied to her letter because after that, I thought my father had made the right decision.

'In the Christian faith, a lot of church leaders take the Bible passages which preach against homosexuality at face value and use them as an excuse to prevent love from occurring. I know now that love is not a gender and that it is never a sin, but back in those days, I believed homosexuals lusted after each other's flesh and were sent from the devil to be the downfall of this world. My family and I used to attend Gay Pride Parades and picket them…

'_**Fourteen years old, and daddy says I already have my head screwed on. I know exactly the words to say which'll cut those fags deep and make them wish they'd never made that stupid decision to be homosexual. I've got my sign all ready for picketing the 'Pride' festival tomorrow. It says, 'Gay' + 'Proud' = POSSESSED BY EVIL! 'Only Jesus can save you from your sins!' JOHN 3:16.**_

_**I'm excited to protest! I feel like I'm doing my part in readying the world for the second coming. My whole family are getting really pumped for it. Except…Johnny doesn't seem to be as into it as everyone else. He said he wasn't doing to bother making a sign, and that he'd just preach instead, but every time I ask him what he's going to say, he tells me to 'Lay off, Scarecrow, would you?' I do not know what has made that boy sweat like a sinner in church…but I think its best not to mention it to daddy. Jonathan's been beaten before for refusing to partake in protests like this, and while the Bible says it's okay to smack your children sometimes, I don't like it when Jonathan makes his face all distant when he is being spanked, and then cries in his room at night. Not just the nights he's hit. This is every night now. I think mommy knows about this too, but I don't ever want to mention it to daddy. If daddy ever thought Jonathan was soft, he'd knock him sky high.'**_

'Jonathan had cried the whole night after that pride parade. Cried loudly and fearfully in his room. The next day, he broke the news to us all. He couldn't take it anymore. He had to say it, because it was eating him alive inside. He knew he was gay and he couldn't hide it anymore. He had prayed to God over and over again, every night, to have mercy on him. To take his homosexual feelings away. To make him 'normal'. But God never did so. He still felt gay.

'Father didn't beat Jonathan that day. On the contrary, he didn't lay one finger on him. He looked like he was disgusted by Johnny's very presence. Instead of hitting my brother, father just pointed a cold, loathing finger at the door and told him to 'Get the hell out of this God-fearing home. And don't you ever, ever come back until every last ounce of the devil is out of you.' I watched my father force Jonathan to pack his bag and I watched him verbally crucifying his only son until Jonathan was reduced to flood loads of tears as he left the Steel house forever. I watched my mother cry uncontrollably and beg at my father's feet to let him come back. I watched my father hit my mother in the face and tell her, 'Never talk to me that way again! Do you hear me? This is a Bible-obeying, Christian household and I will **not** have a hell-born faggot living under my roof!' I watched my father stare at each of us who remained in turn and dare us to say anything against him disowning my brother.

'But now we're getting off topic. Plenty more time to fill you in on that story later on. And I promise I will, because, like I said before, Jonathan is a huge part of my own story, too.

'After Melody was fired from tutoring me, I was basically on my own. But something she'd told me about really made an imprint on my brain. From the moment she spoke the words, 'Julliard, School Of Music' to the teenaged me, I knew that that's where I was meant to be. It was God's plan for me. I only thought it would lead me into becoming the best musician I would be…not having a baby and giving it to a gay couple and meeting a man to spend my life with while changing my views and life in the process.

'Of course, father did not approve of my dream to go to Julliard, even if it was him who arranged and paid for a Professor from the school to come out and listen to me play. Even when my acceptance letter came, he asked me 'Faith, would it not be wiser to find yourself a good, Christian husband and bring up a family? This is a silly decision you have made, and I don't believe God would ever plan for you to have the life of a musician.'

'That was the first time I ever noticed my mother's eye twitch. If I had blinked, I'd have missed it. But she twitched at my father's words. But it's the flash in her eye that I remember most…that glint that told me I needed to go to New York, no matter what my father told me was right. My plan was decided by the destiny of getting my acceptance letter, and nothing anyone said could change my mind. And I think me leaving home might have given my mother the strength to do something, too. But that's skipping ahead of the story.


End file.
